For the first time at this scale, advanced AI designed for industrial and medical use will be applied directly to radio astronomy, allowing researchers to process vast streams of data on-site and identify potential cosmic signals far faster than before.
The Allen Telescope Array’s 42-dish array continuously scans the sky for faint radio emissions from distant cosmic events to possible signs of intelligent life. With Nvidia IGX Thor, SETI scientists will now be able to process and interpret incoming signals at the telescope itself, dramatically reducing the delay between detection and analysis.
“Nvidia IGX Thor enables us to run AI inference and GPU-accelerated signal processing closer to the edge,” said Luigi Cruz, staff engineer at the SETI Institute. “Its compact, power-efficient design makes it perfect for our next-generation detection pipeline based on Nvidia Holoscan.”
The upgrade builds on SETI’s earlier success with Nvidia IGX Orin, which powered the world’s first real-time AI search for fast radio bursts, powerful, millisecond-long flashes of radio energy. Moving to IGX, Thor expands those capabilities, allowing astronomers to analyse larger sections of the sky with greater accuracy and speed.
“By combining scientific curiosity with advanced technology, we’re transforming how we explore the universe,” said Dr Andrew Siemion, Bernard M Oliver chair for SETI. “The Nvidia platform gives us the reliability and performance to run complex AI models directly at the telescope – it’s an incredible step forward for our mission.”
Already used in fields such as industrial automation and medical imaging, Nvidia’s IGX Thor platform is proving its versatility in the most demanding environments. Now, it’s helping SETI push the boundaries of space exploration using the same AI tools making factories safer and hospitals smarter to search the stars for life beyond Earth.